erlend

ernie, 3 days ago to random

I want to see more small sites on the internet. Let’s make it a better place without giant monolithic tools that eventually screw us over.

https://tedium.co/2024/06/07/small-website-tools-importance/

new @tedium

dansup, 5 days ago to Pixelfed

An open source/self hosted and federated Tik-Tok alternative, made by @pixelfed has just successfully tested federation!

https://loops.video

If you applied to join, expect an invite within the next week! ✨

(We will be open sourcing the mobile app and backend later this summer)

#loops #pixelfed #tiktok

dangillmor, 5 days ago to random

1. Washington Post CEO came from the Murdoch empire.

2. He has been implicated in the (still not fully unraveled) UK "phone hacking" scandal that exemplified the sleaziness of the Murdoch empire.

3. He told Post editor not to publish a story containing references to his alleged involvement.

4. She published the story.

5. She's gone.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/05/business/media/washington-post-buzbee-lewis.html

mekkaokereke, 5 days ago (edited 1 day ago) to random

99.7% of Venture Capital money goes to people that are not Black women.

0.3% of Venture Capital goes to Black women.

The 11th circuit court cited civil rights law when it said that it is racist to stop anyone from having access to VC based on their race, and that setting aside VC for people of a given race is racist.

So they ruled against a group of Black women looking to give their own money to Black founders. For violating the civil rights. Of white men that want that 0.3% too.🙂🙃

1/N

freebliss, 6 days ago (edited 2 days ago) to random

This week I'm officially beginning my work on #faircamp in the scope of the Faircamp 1.0 grant through #NGI0 Entrust @NGIZero, financed by @EC_NGI, which will span the next months throughout summer and early fall 2024 at least.

Working together with the people at NLnet foundation to set everything up has been a blast so far and I'm very grateful to be given this opportunity. <3 Everyone of you who use, support, contribute to, and spread the news about faircamp have made this possible as well, so thank you all!

First developments this week are the introduction of complicance with FSFE's https://reuse.software/ in the codebase, yesterday's release of a stable/version-locked AUR package (https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/faircamp), setting up a dedicated "Feature suggestions" thread in the issue tracker (https://codeberg.org/simonrepp/faircamp/issues/90 - please read the fine print ;)), and some bugfixing work with support from @lislegaard which will go right into the next release. Excited to be back in the lab! \o/

thisismissem, 7 days ago to random

There's so much fear in the fediverse about bad admins/mods, and honestly it's no different to the days where we had forums with bad admins/mods.

The problem is that largely for the past decade people have been in walled gardens either never thinking of moderation, or actively needing to work against moderation to exist.

And you didn't have a choice, because you were locked into that provider & their moderation policies.

autonomic, 6 days ago (edited 2 days ago) to random

Sick of corporate controlled infrastructure?

Autonomic are supporting the foundation of a new co-operative that currently provides Matrix and Nextcloud to individuals.

Where we go from here, is up to you.

https://cooperative.computer/

#workercoops #coops #co-ops

erlend, 7 days ago to rust

https://blog.commune.sh/weird-happenings/

After two months of development, a LOT has happened in the Weird project.

Weird is a web application built to increase the agency of internet users. We are building three interconnected pillars as our foundation:

• Independent social sign-in rooted in the OIDC standard as keymaster
• A personal web space creator
• An actually-social network of shared purpose

In two weeks we're starting our pilot with the Norwegian Buddhist Foundation!

#RustLang #iroh #oidc #identity

baldur, 7 days ago to random

“Witnessing the death of the web as a news medium | Christian Heilmann”

https://christianheilmann.com/2024/06/03/witnessing-the-death-of-the-web-as-a-news-medium/

> Almost every social platform now ranks posts with links lower than posts that are just statements.

I know this but I still can't bring myself to not add links to most of what I write.

404mediaco, 8 days ago to random

We obtained an internal database of employee-reported privacy incidents at Google that shows the huge breadth of data it has and the run-of-the-mill and spectacular ways it mishandles it all the time

https://www.404media.co/google-leak-reveals-thousands-of-privacy-incidents/

Shrigglepuss, 10 days ago to random

I'm really really really not interested in computers getting more powerful.
I am super interested in them being more repairable and modifiable, drawing less power, lasting and being supported for way longer etc. That stuff still gets me excited

rbreich, 10 days ago to random

Billionaires aren’t just supporting Trump for the tax cuts.

As Peter Thiel once admitted: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”

Make no mistake: The goal of American oligarchy is to tear down democracy itself.

thomastospace, 11 days ago to random

Google has started the 'Manifest V2 phase-out', which to put it in simple user-friendly words:

Google is phasing out features that make current adblockers work. uBlock Origin will not be able to block ads as effectively as before.

https://blog.chromium.org/2024/05/manifest-v2-phase-out-begins.html

Now, how to solve this? Well, there's one answer. Move to Firefox:
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/

Firefox on Android is great as well, and supports adblockers as well!

wearenew_public, 11 days ago to random

RESEARCH: On decentralized social networks like Mastodon, community moderators can choose to defederate — disconnect from another group to protect themselves from harassers and undesirable content.

The effects of defederation include reduced activity on blocked servers, but not necessarily less toxic content.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2404.02109

thisismissem, 12 days ago to mastodon

If you've ever tried to implement an OAuth Application for Mastodon, and butted into the “unknown client_id / application” error, where the Mastodon server has silently deleted your OAuth Application….

I have good news for you:We've removed the OAuth Application Vacuuming from Mastodon: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/pull/30316

🎉

#mastodon #mastodev

jaz, 13 days ago to random

🎉 Absolutely thrilled to watch the public launch of IFTAS Connect today.

Volunteer social media moderators do some of the hardest, often traumatic work on the Internet keeping people safe - all for no love, little or no money, and with very little support.

IFTAS Connect is one path to building collaborative spaces to share the load and connect with peers around the world.

If you're a moderator, community manager, T&S pro, or researcher, come see what we've built!

➡️ https://connect.iftas.org

LaurensHof, 13 days ago to crypto

What is Farcaster, and why did it raise 150M USD?

Farcaster, a crypto-based decentralised social networking protocol hit the news this week, by raising an eye watering 150 million USD, with a valuation of 1 billion USD, all the while sporting around 80K daily active users. For context, Bluesky has around 300k daily active users. The news raises a few questions: What exactly is Farcaster, how does it differ from the other decentralised social networking protocols, and why did it get such a massive valuation?

Farcaster

A short history of the name Farcaster:

• 1989: The Hyperion Cantos is a science fiction novel series from the 1990’s, in which a farcaster network allows instantaneous travel between different worlds. The farcaster network is build and maintained by an AI Civilization called the TechnoCore. In later books it is revealed the TechnoCore was planning to use the farcaster network to destroy humankind.
• 2020: 2 ex-Coinbase directors, Dan Romero and Varun Srinivasan, start their own company, and start working on a product called RSS+.
• Late 2021: a viral tweet sets a new standard for naming tech products.
• Summer 2022: Romero and Srinivasan rebrand their product Farcaster, and announce a 30M funding around led by a16z.
• May 2024: Farcaster announces a 150 million USD investment with a valuation of 1 billion USD.

How Farcaster works

There are two main parts to understanding how the Farcaster protocol works: Integration with the Ethereum Blockchain, and decentralisation via relays (called Hubs).

A Farcaster account is registered on the Ethereum blockchain, and you create an account by having your Ethereum account making a transaction on the Ethereum blockchain (called an onchain transaction). This means that you’ll have to pay transaction fees in order to create an account. If you use Warpcast, the microblogging app for Farcaster build by the Farcaster team, they will handle the transaction for you, charging you a roughly 4 USD fee to cover the blockchain transaction costs.

Hubs are the core part of the network. If you send out a message, or like a cast (posts are called casts on Farcaster), or follow another account, then you send this data to a single Hub. The Hub is automatically selected by the App you use to. Hubs contain and process all the data of the entire Farcaster network. Your Hub then sends out your data to all other Hubs on the entire Farcaster network, and Hubs are responsible for making sure that their data is in sync with all other Hubs in the network.

Another feature of Farcaster is that you have to pay to store your data in Hubs. It costs around 7 USD per year to store 5000 posts. If you make more than 5000 posts your oldest posts will get deleted, or you have to pay for more storage. Farcaster claims that “charging rent prevents users from spamming the network.” Considering X’s succes in fighting spam bots by charging 8 USD/month for a blue checkmark, charging more than 10 times less will surely also be successful in preventing spam on a network that has build financial incentives into its core architecture.

Blockchain integrations

The Ethereum blockchain is involved in various other parts of the network:
When you want to use a new app on Farcaster, you’ll have to authorize that app with a transaction on the blockchain. With current pricing it costs around 0.1 USD to use a new app within the Farcaster network.

Another feature of Farcaster is Frames, which allow you to turn a post into an interactive app. These Frames/apps can be integrated with blockchains as well, and by far the most popular usecase I see for Frames is for minting NFTs, with airdropping memetokens being another option.

Warpcast is the most popular usecase of Farcaster, and the official microblogging app made by the same people who are building the Farcaster protocol. Other products are also possible to build with Farcaster; Paragraph.xyz is a web3 newsletter platform that has integrated with the Farcaster protocol. If the crypto wallet you used to register with Farcaster is the same as the wallet you used to register with Paragraph, your followers relationships carry over and you can see the long-form writing of your Farcaster followers in Paragraph. There is also a button in Warpcast that apparently mints Paragraph articles as an NFT, but for the sake of my own sanity I’ve decided not to press that button.

The various ways that Farcaster integrates with crypto and blockchains make the network especially popular with the web3/NFT crypto crowd. Notably this is a different crowd than the people on Nostr. A rough summary is that Nostr is for people who like Bitcoin and are into libertarianism, and Farcaster is for people who like Ethereum and are into NFTs.

On valuation

Farcaster raised 150M USD this month, with a valuation of 1 billion USD, with the funding round led by Paradigm, and joined by a16z crypto. Paradigm is a crypto VC fund (with a Coinbase co-founder) and a16z crypto is the crypto VC fund of 16z.

Farcaster’s valuation of 1 billion USD raised some eyebrows for being just ever so slightly on the high side. With an estimate of 45k DAU at the time of raise, this translates to a completely normal and sensible valuation of 22k USD per user. Even by a16z’s own standards this is an exceptional valuation: in spring 2021 a16z invested in audio app Clubhouse, valuing it at 4 billion. Clubhouse had 10 million weekly active users at the time, and had clearly broken through into mainstream awareness, an more importantly, was free to use at the time.

That said, I think there are some reasons why Farcaster is valuable to Paradigm and a16z crypto:

• The uptake of Farcaster shows hockeystick growth over the last few months. This is especially noteworthy considering that growth on other decentralised social networks has stalled over the last months, and it costs money to join Farcaster. Being able to show hockeystick-type of growth considering these two added difficulties makes Farcaster worth paying attention to.
• Usage of Farcaster increases usage of crypto, of which crypto exchanges, especially Coinbase, are major benefactors. More specifically, much of Farcaster uses a derivative of the Ethereum blockchain called Optimism. There are many links between Farcaster and Coinbase, both in the people who work on the project as well as investors who funded both organisations. An increase in usage of the Optimism blockchain is directly beneficial to Coinbase.
• There are a ton of crypto projects that have been build over the years that do not have any users, often with VC investments. Providing a social graph to integrate crypto projects into can help these crypto projects gain a user base.

Overall I think there are clear reasons why Farcaster is valuable to VC Crypto companies such as a16z and Paradigm. Whether ‘valuable’ also means ‘1 billion USD valuable’ is less clear, however.

---

Thank you for reading. I write about what is happening in the world of decentralised social networks, with a weekly newsletter on the fediverse and a monthly newsletter about Bluesky. You can subscribe here, or follow me on the fediverse:

#crypto #farcaster

https://fediversereport.com/what-is-farcaster-and-why-did-it-raise-150m-usd/

404mediaco, 14 days ago to random

Google's own researchers now say AI is a top vector of disinfo, in a paper that severely and obviously undercounts the problem

https://www.404media.co/google-says-ai-now-leading-disinformation-vector-and-is-severely-undercounting-the-problem/

tante, 14 days ago to random

“Empty Innovation” at Re:Publica 2024 #rp24

Under the motto "Who Cares" Re:Publica gathered a few thousand people in Berlin and I got to give a talk continuing the path I started out on with my last two talks in 2022 and 2023. Titled "Empty Innovation" I tried outlining my understanding of the patterns of the weird technological hypes we've gone through in the last years, why they happen and also what this mode of "innovation" does to us as people, communities and societies.

https://tante.cc/2024/05/28/empty-innovation-at-republica-2024-rp24/

internetarchive, 15 days ago to random

Sorry to say, archive.org is under a ddos attack. The data is not affected, but most services are unavailable.

We are working on it & will post updates in comments.

crabnebula, 14 days ago to random

Do you want to debug your @TauriApps with ease?
Support us now on Product Hunt and start using DevTools for free today. Do you have any questions? We're here to help! 🚀

https://www.producthunt.com/posts/crabnebula-devtools

baldur, 15 days ago to random

"Social media."

https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2024/social-media/

Originally this was supposed to go out with today's newsletter but I figured it might be better to see if people have feedback on it before I send it out to the list

Basically just having some thoughts on how I approach my social media.

pkafka, 18 days ago to random

ChatGPT spooked Google into replacing search + links with search + AI answers that are sometimes Very Wrong. Too late to turn back?

By me: https://www.businessinsider.com/google-ai-search-bad-answers-risk-peter-kafka-2024-5

parismarx, 19 days ago to tech

Balaji Srinivasan is leading a growing tech movement to take over San Francisco and “ethnically cleanse” it of Silicon Valley’s critics.

On #TechWontSaveUs, I spoke to @gilduran about network states and tech billionaires’ turn against democracy.

Listen to the full episode: https://techwontsave.us/episode/221_techs_plan_to_ethnically_cleanse_san_francisco_w_gil_duran

#tech #sf #politics

steve, 19 days ago to fediverse

According to Federated Social Network Service/System (SNS) History, the term "Fediverse" was coined on 2012-05-25. Long before #ActivityPub... just sayin'.
https://codeberg.org/ddfon/federated-sns/src/branch/main/fediverse-history.markdown